


Psychic Readings by the Mage of Heart

by bittersweetlapse



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, kanmeu, meukri, meulin/kankri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:55:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersweetlapse/pseuds/bittersweetlapse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meulin Leijon is perfectly happy with her "mind-reading" job in the city as a college dropout, and she's not interested in seeing her old high school crush, Kankri Vantas, again. Not his freckles, or his stupid oxford shoes, or his pale blue eyes. Not even when he asks for her help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psychic Readings by the Mage of Heart

**Author's Note:**

> idk what this is. an apology for never updating my fics, i guess.

_It was like looking into a closet,_ you tell them. _Sometimes, there’s a lot of stuff in there--boxes stacked everywhere and things draped over every available surface. Other times, everything is neat and organized. You can think of me like your mom, helping you clean up your room._

What you never say is that with every person you’ve read, no matter how organized their “closet” was, there were always a few boxes crammed in the back. Dusty, time-worn, and sealed very, very tightly. In there, they kept the things that no one can see. No one but you.

For you, people just work like that.

You’re not sure how you got it, or why. It’s sure as hell not a normal thing. Your friends can do things like control wind and make people listen to them--nothing to be sneezed at. But you? You’re, well, a mind-reader. To put it bluntly.

_"Mind-reading" is a silly term,_ you say, when people are shocked at your analysies of every problem and worry they’ve ever had, from the childhood snapping dog to the way the cashier looked at them last Tuesday. _Minds aren't open books._ That's not true, but no one would go to you if they knew you could actually see the state of the closet in their head, like looking through a mirror. You passed your talent off as a campy psychic job in a ratty apartment downtown, and pretended to read less than you did.

You guess your “God Tier”, the colloquial term for the sets of powers people have depending on the “class” and “aspect” they were born into, is Heart. Mage of Heart. You don’t know what it’s supposed to do, but what you can do is figure out what makes people tick, through their “heart” or whatever. You don’t think about it too hard. As long as the moolah keeps coming, and you’re keeping people oblivious to what your own heart looks like.

Anyway, by the time you’ve held your job for a year, you’re raking in the cash and feeling pretty damn good about yourself. You’re making money here--real money. Like money to make yourself look presentable. Like money to make it look like you hadn’t dropped out of college and off the face of the earth, near-deaf in a terrible accident at age 20 and something to be pitied.

Basically, everything was good until turtleneck boy showed up. 

His arrival was completely unprecedented--for all your alleged “foresight”, the stuffy ginger was the absolute last person you’d expected to show up at your humble abode. 5”8 with a nose like a fish hook and a voice you remember to be like a college professor with a really snotty major (and with a carrot stuck up the aforementioned nose), Kankri Vantas had been your high school squeeze for...well, most of high school. And by “squeeze”, you mean someone you smiled at every time he talked, and someone who you had known for years before, and someone you hurt yourself trying to fix. 

He had made it perfectly clear you would not be “the one”, which is why it’s really ironic that he’s hunched over in your office with the handpainted sign out in front reading “Mage of Heart”. The people that fall for your whole “witchy” facade are the most fun to read, because they come into your office ready to swallow anything you tell them. Heavily skeptical and fake as fuck, determined to keep his strict morals in check, and a little more like you than you’d care to admit, Kankri did not strike you as one of those people.

“Hello.” You read his chapped lips effortlessly as he kneels on the cushion in front of your “desk”, which is low to the floor and dimly lit. You blink your glittery eyelashes slowly and are about to launch into your opening speech when you recognize the glint of his blue eyes behind his glasses, and you’re stopped dead. Your hesitance makes him blink up at you, and he also pauses mid-sentence, his eyes widening.

For a while, neither of you speak, until finally, you say, your accent wiped clean of any traces of your “mysterious psychic” voice, “Well, fuck me sideways. It’s Kankri ‘cross-my-heart’ Vantas.”

The guy reels back like he hadn’t expected you to remember, which is really stupid. How could you forget those summer days, the smell of lilacs and the pinch of sunburn? It’s there. It’s in a box, somewhere. 

“Meulin ‘psychic’ Leijon,” he returns evenly, if not a bit guiltily. “I thought I recognized your nickname on that sign.”

You sigh and drum your fingers on the desk, pulling off your witch hat reluctantly and toggling the volume dial on your nearly inconspicuous hearing aids. “Whaddya want, Vantas? I’m a busy girl. I’ve got money to make and idiots to fleece.”

“You used to call me by my first name,” he whines, leaning forward. The filters over the dim lights in the room turn the walls a neon teal shade that quickly switches to normal as you flip the switch irritably. He weakly covers his eyes with his red sleeve as you sit normally on your cushion.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, _Kani_ ,” you spit. “Sorry you came in here to haunt me like a goddamn specter. Are you interested in an examination or are you just going to needle me? See how fun it is to make ‘Meu’ mad?”

To his credit, Kankri takes the tongue-lashing well, with his head bowed. Finally, he looks up at you again, and god. God DAMMIT. You can’t look away from his pale blue eyes. You never could. 

Once he knows he has your attention, he says quietly, but with a slight smile reminiscent of smugness, “I need your help.”

Oh, sure. Now he asks. 

“Fine,” you mutter, angry with yourself for feeling the fluttering in your stomach break out like a lone, escaped butterfly. “Fine. What is it?”

“I just want you to…” He pauses, considering the cracked disco ball dangling from the ceiling, and taps his head, a curl of carrot-colored hair shifting. 

“To, ah, take a look,” he says finally, smiling wryly. “I know how you use the ‘closet’ example. Consider this a major remodeling in my...mental interior storage design.”

This, this is why you avoided the guy after high school. Anybody with a smile like that who uses phrases like “mental interior storage” are not to be trusted within 20 feet of you. Unless that 20 feet becomes less than three. Which, actually, is about your distance from Kankri right now, considering you have to do a trick similar to a Vulcan mind-meld to get in anybody’s head. 

You wish he would stop smiling, it’s knowing and sly and a little flirty and it’s making it hard to focus. It’s like he remembers how you bite your lip when you’re nervous. Dammit, Vantas. 

You take your two fingers and put them right between the bridge of his nose, gently almost-touching the corners of his sunken eyes. (As much as you’d like to shove him hard and shout “Surprise!”, you’re going to have to resist that urge for now.) And instantly, when you close your own eyes, you can see it.

One of your favorite things about reading people is how their rooms around their closets physically look different. You recall one memorable girl’s closet patterned with a wallpaper of light blue dolphins in a taffy-pink sea. Kankri’s is a very faint red, but it’s not pink. It’s definitely red, carmine. This is important to you for some unknown reason as you approach the closet.

Unsurprisingly, the door is closed. This is normal. Most people aren’t willing to immediately open up to a complete stranger, or their ex-best-friend of many years. 

You gently push on the doors, which creak open with a squeal that makes you cringe. Hesitantly, you peek inside to see the closet is...very, very clean. Well. Also expected. The boxes are color-coordinated, size-coordinated, item-coordinated. 

The closet isn’t too tall, which is nice, because it means you can reach everything. You hesitantly reach for a blue box. It’s labeled _church_ ; ergo, you aren’t going to look there because you don’t care. Another one says _school_. That makes you snort. Lotta shit behind that straight 4.0 GPA and all Honors classes, you’re sure.

Down the line you go. There is a box marked _family_ , but it’s suspiciously empty. You’ll get to that in a minute. You’re far more interested in the very small, locked box suddenly tucked in the corner that says _private_.

When you reach for the box, the whole vision wavers, and you grimace. Must be a sensitive subject. If you try to physically move, the connection could break, at the risk of sounding cliche or whatnot. You gently touch the box again, with the same results.

You think harder. _Let me look in this box. Where’s the key?_

The key manifests in your hand, covered in writhing snakes, which you drop, screaming. Then, just as quickly as they appeared, they’re gone, and you hesitantly take the key and turn it in the lock. 

You didn’t even think it was possible to experience physical sensations in this state, but your stomach knots as the contents make themselves known to you. They’re artifacts in the forms of normal objects, like a love letter that you gave to him in third grade, and a test with an F on it. But as you stare, more and more appear: Long-locked-away angst, family issues, self-worth issues, insecurity, body image, public image, anxiety, depression, crippling loneliness, long broken nights alone--

You shudder and gasp and snap awake, where you feel hot tears are forcing their way out of your eyes. You try to cough out someone else’s emotions imposed on you without sounding too pained. But you don’t really feel anything, of course. You’ve long since learned the importance of keeping real emotions out of your trade. 

Besides, why would you care about Kankri? No, no, these tears are definitely only because of your reading, and not because you remember the lanky sweatered boy sitting by himself at lunch. Of course. 

Kankri looks as shocked as you feel as you stare at him. The connection between your eyes is tense and delicate, like fibers of molten gold. It breaks almost instantly as he looks down, twists the fabric of his turtleneck sleeves under his tapered, pale fingers. 

It’s you that finally speaks up, and the words are still jumbled with the effort of sounding normal. “I...I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, something glinting in his eye. “You did find it, then.” 

“I’m not a therapist,” you say harshly to mask your pity. “I can’t fix you or your problems, Vantas. That’s not my job. Besides, if you wanted help, you should have asked earlier, when I wanted to give it to you.”

When he looks at you again, his eyes are the exact color of the sky through quartz, and the dark circles under them haunt you. 

“I know,” he says. The honesty of his statement surprises you silent, and you let him continue. “I just wanted...I just wanted to try, I suppose.” 

His red-orange eyebrows are creased in a way that definitely seems pained, but you know his game. Kankri is a conniving liar, ruthlessly faking any and all emotions, and you can’t believe anything he says. It hurt you too bad, back then, and you can’t be hurt again, no, really you can’t.

When you speak again, the anger and regret and tears are clogging in your throat. “Well, go see a doctor then, carrot-top. Sorry I can’t help. Bye.”

He looks startled, possibly because your volume was louder than you can monitor, and probably also because you used his childhood nickname, just to make sure he really gets it into his thick skull that coming to see you was a bad idea. “But--”

You breathe deeply and blink hard, and point at the door, keeping your finger as still as you can manage. 

Kankri tries to give you the puppy-dog eyes, but you’re so angry you just curl your lip, and you think he gets the message because he slinks out with only a timid glance backwards at you. You’re not sorry to see him go, no, not at all. No sentiment left on your part. 

When he closes the door, you want to scream. How could that fucking freckled twig waltz in here, knowing full well that asking you to read him was basically rubbing salt on a old, painful scab? He knew that you had stopped caring a long time ago. 

You’re so angry you can barely think. Just by making you pity him and smiling like a shy schoolboy and blinking those long eyelashes, suddenly, _bam,_ everyone’s on his side. 

His power was to twist people to his will, and you can never believe a word he says. Looking into his mind was the worst possible confirmation that everything you thought you knew about him was right--and the fact that he’s baring his throat for you means something in his life is very, very wrong. 

You never could look away from those pale blue eyes.


End file.
